Project Mercury

[NERVAfan]

I decided to make a Mercury Redstone and fly an Alan Shepard-style suborbital mission.

The stock launch escape tower is horribly oversized for a Mk1 pod, so I tried to imitate it with 2 sepratrons on a stack of Cubic Octagonal Struts (with a tiny-size decoupler to jettison it). However, when I tested this, the capsule blocked the thrust. So I attached the sepratrons to the capsule itself and kept the strut tower just for looks.

The rocket itself is made of 1 FL-T800, 1 FL-T400, and 1 FL-T200 with an LV-T30. The stock fins are way too big, proportionally, so I used Small Hardpoints to imitate the Redstone fins.

Miteny Kerman was assigned to fly this mission.

Here it is launching:

And the capsule reentering in flames after a brief trip to space:

And a safe recovery:

[NERVAfan]

Next step: the Mercury Atlas.

This is a weird rocket, and by trying to match the functionality, I ended up with something that looked quite different. The Atlas rocket used didn't stage, but it had 3 engines, 2 of which were dropped off during flight - this is probably the closest thing to an SSTO that's ever flown to orbit.

Trying to build this in KSP, I couldn't get fuel to flow through a decoupler, so I had to attach a tiny Oscar-B fuel tank to each of the side engines and use a fuel line to feed fuel from the main tank.

Similarly, I couldn't use a tricoupler, since that would make its thrust off-center with only one engine. So this rocket has 3 "cores" even though the real Mercury-Atlas rocket only had one.

Podlo Kerman was assigned to fly this mission. Here it is launching:

Here it is after engine separation:

And here's the stable orbit:

And firing retrorockets for reentry (these are actually the same separatrons I used to represent the launch escape system):

The capsule then parachuted to a safe landing and was recovered.

[Cydonian Monk]

Agreed - Mercury Atlas with the disposible boosters was a weird thing. I tried to make a stock-only version of it some time back and decided to just leave the two extra engines attached. Very much an SSTO.

Cool reenactment!

[NERVAfan]

Thank you!

[Brotoro]

Your sepatrons will on the escape tower if you angle their nozzles outward.

[NERVAfan]

Ah, thank you. I figured there should be a way to do that but I could only turn them 90 degrees with Q/E/W/S etc. keys. How do you angle them just a little bit?

[Brotoro]

Ah, thank you. I figured there should be a way to do that but I could only turn them 90 degrees with Q/E/W/S etc. keys. How do you angle them just a little bit?

Hold down the Shift key while using the rotation keys (Q,E,W,S,A,D) to rotate in 5-degree steps instead of 90-degree steps.

[NERVAfan]

OK, thank you!

[ZooNamedGames]

I know I'm WAAAAY late to the party here- but I'll leave this here anyway-

Mind if I post my own Mercury Redstone+Atlas? I don't mean to brag or anything honestly- but rather to compare and give constructive criticism since I know making a replica of anything is difficult in KSP...

[NERVAfan]

Go ahead, that would be great to see!

[ZooNamedGames]

Go ahead, that would be great to see!

Uploading to Imgur soon.

[ZooNamedGames]

Internet issues are causing me to post it later- sorry.